(They threatened to post our names and faces on Facebook, TV, and newspapers so we would be humiliated in front of our children and relatives if we did not pay. The collector said we were bad people because we didn’t know how to pay loans and told this to all the people we placed as character references when we applied for a loan.)

Working as a waiter at an Italian restaurant in Doha, Greg is one of the 6,000 Filipinos who leave daily for work overseas.

Had Greg gotten his way, he would have chosen to stay in Qatar. Despite months’ worth of delayed wagescoupled with verbal and emotional abuse in his workplace – all came second to a fact: he had a loan to pay.

“Tiniis kong lahat ang ginagawa sa akin dahil alam kong may obligasyon akong binabayaran sa lending,” Greg said in an affidavit. (I endured everything because I knew that I had an obligation to pay back my loan.)

With his salary withheld for months, Greg could not resign to look for another job. Under the kafalasystem, he would have to secure the permission of his employer before starting an application for other work.